Explanation:
Long winding spiral arms are clearly evident on this spectacular picture of
the spiral
galaxy M83. The blue colour of the
spiral arms is caused by the relatively large fraction of young blue stars
there. Dark
dust lanes are
mixed in with the stars and trace the spiral structure of the galaxy. This
galaxy contains many billions of stars, and its light took many millions of
years to reach us. Our own
Milky Way Galaxy would appear similar to this if
viewed from images from the
Anglo-Australian
Telescope (AAT).